Farm fresh: Food day brings healthy eats to area schools
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
RONAN – As the lunch bell echoed through the halls of Ronan Middle School, so did the rumble of eager children’s bellies as they rushed to the cafeteria to refuel for the rest of the school day. But on Oct. 24, the menu was a little different.
Nine schools throughout Montana participated in the first-ever Food Day, which is part of the Farm to School program. The food was provided by Western Montana Growers Cooperative, while Mission Mountain Food Enterprise and Lake County Community Development processed the food.
Polson and St. Ignatius Schools also participated in the event, with St. Ignatius doing an entire month of fresh, local foods on the menu.
Students were greeted with a lentil burger taste testing, local honey crisp apples, butternut squash and local beef tacos in an attempt to expose children to healthy, local food. The event was headed by FoodCorp service member and AmeriCorp Vista Lindsay Howard, who moved from North Carolina in July to serve a 12-month position with MMFEC. Together, Howard and MMFEC seek to improve the local economy and keep more locally grown food at home by facilitating an increase in the purchase of locally grown foods and bringing them into area schools. Her position, part of FoodCorps’ Montana Rural Food Project, is funded by the USDA and is a subprogram of AmeriCorps VISTA.
“I think it went really wonderful,” Howard said. “The kids I spoke with were really responsive. The lentil burger was hysterical: 60 percent of the kids were positive about it, and a small percentage hated it and said it looked like bear poop.”
Howard was thrilled to make the fresh food day feasible for the school districts and said the event was a great opportunity to be in the cafeteria with the Ronan staff. Howard’s hope was to leave a positive impact with the cooks, as she plans to continue working with them in future fresh food days.
According to Ronan School District Food Service Supervisor Marsha Wartick, the district generally receives USDA beef for free. One day of local beef cost $546, or 49 cents per student just for the meat. The overall expense for the fresh, local meal was between $650 and $700.
“We could afford to do this once or twice a year,” Wartick said. “The meat is one of the major expenses. We’ve used local carrots, squash, watermelon and apples in the past.”
Wartick noted she believed the caloric value between local food and trucked-in foods to be around the same. Howard disagreed, stating local foods are more nutritious, because they don’t have a loss of nutritional value during transport. She added that local foods stay on the vine longer and are not sprayed with harmful chemicals.
The local food day brought a $700 boost to the local economy and kept the staff at MMFEC and LCCD busy for two weeks processing the food. One reason they decided to introduce lentil burgers is because Montana is a large producer of lentils. The burgers consisted of oats, flaxseed, lentils, sunflower seeds, organic eggs, bell peppers and buckwheat.
“They’re a complete protein,” Howard added.
“It was absolutely a positive impact,” Howard said. “The time I spent with kids was great, and having worked with Marsha Wartick and the staff, I hope to use it as a platform to do it more than once a month. It’s a super cool benefit for the kids, and I’m happy that it went well.”
